Family Trip

This week the Lemiere's went to Eagle Crest for a family trip. We haven't taken one with everybody in a long time - a really long time. We golfed, rode bikes (Kaed has been impressive in his newfound bike riding abilities), swam, tennis, spray park, played card/board games, took naps and ate a lot of good food.

Dash has been busting us up all week. He swims now - with the help of an inflated donut - all by himself. He smeared some pink washable ink on his face one night and looked like he put on some eye shadow. He golfed for the first time on an 18 hole putt-putt course and knows the difference between taking a full swing and tapping it in - or as he says "tappy in". Dad gave him some deoderant too and loves to make everyone smell his pits. Very cute, but kinda gross. Oh, and Kaed announced, with all seriousness, that he can't wait to get armpit hair. Why? Who knows.

Amber and Dash seemed to have bonded a bit too this week. In the past, he's been kind of stand-off-ish toward her, but he seems to be content to hang out with her now. Which is good. Maybe it's because he felt bad for her because she walked full steam into a screen door and exfoliated her face. I don't know?

Kaed's had a good week here. Along with riding his bike very well, he's been an excellent swimmer. He's also tried new foods without much complaint - which is good because he can be picky at times. And most importantly, he's been a great big brother this week! He and Dash and Amber went running through the sprinkler's last night on the golf course and they were screaming and giggling the whole time.

Man hood and blunders

This has been a big week for Kaed's progress in his manhood, and mine in fatherhood. This week, Kaed learned to ride a bike, sans training wheels. One day he absolutely couldn't do it, the next day he was riding all over the place. I'm very proud of him. Just in time too because we're going to be doing some serious bike riding down at Eagle Crest next week. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind is the slight insecurity about not being able teach him to swim, but fortunately Jon (his dad) is much more pool-savy than I.

I tried to open a bottle of red wine the other day with a screwdriver. Why a screwdriver? Because I don't have a bottle opener. I'm not much of a wine guy so I had to MacGyver the cork out. Turns out, a screwdriver is a bad idea. What happened was that I pushed the cork so hard that it actually went all the way into the bottle creating quite a bit of pressure inside. As soon as the cork was submerged, a geyser of red wine shot out Old-Faithful style over everything! All over me, my friend, my kitchen, and even my ceiling (but I didn't catch that until the next day when it had already stained it...). Learn from this: phillips screwdrivers are bad when trying to fanagle a cork out of it's bottle.

So I had a Pampered Chef party at my house last night . . . (of all the things I thought I'd never say...) and it was pretty fun. 34 people. Good food and good times.

I heard this line the other day given to me by one of my friends, "Scattegories (the board game) is like 2nd base for Christian chicks." Totally cracked me up though I'm not sure what he meant nor am I exactly sure what "2nd base" is. Made me laugh though.

Hero, x2

Good to be back. I'll try to be on this with a little regularity, but as I don't have internet at home, it may be tough. I've been encouraged byt some to get back to writing/blogging.

Yesterday Dash, Kaed, and little brother Eric and I went down to the Cowlitz River to get out of the heat. It's safe for the boys there as long as you don't get out too far into the river (big drop-off). Well, there were 2 people swimming down river, a late 30's dad and a daughter of about 11-12. They were trying to swim back into the shallow area but the river got ahold of them and began taking them down river at a pace to quick to overcome. Daughter was scared and tired. Dad was too. Dad began yelling "HELP" which only scared daughter more.

At the first 'help', I jumped into action. I quickly ran to our stuff and grabbed Dash's little life vest and booked it into the river Hasselhoff-style (the Baywatch theme "I'll be ready!" was playing in the background of my mind - no lie ). Eric was parallelling them as deeply as he could waiting for them to be close enough to reach out and grab them. As I ran out to them, I chucked the small life vest to the daughter perfectly! It hit her right in the chest while swiftly moving with the current. Joe Montana couldn't have thrown it better. [At this time I'd like to ask a trivia question. Those that really know me will get it: Which hand did I throw that life jacket with? The answer is at the bottom of the post.] Anyway, the life vest is really small, but as soon as the daughter had it she relaxed a bit, but wasn't any closer. That's when Eric swam out to her (foolish? hero?) and swam her in. I also had grabbed a stick (which I thought was longer when I grabbed it, but ended up being pretty short - good thing I'm used to that...). When Eric was close enough to me, he grabbed the stick, the girl grabbed him, the dad grabbed her, and all were pulled in.

Dad was thankful (although he very macho-ly claimed that he was fine the whole time - whatever man) and daughter was crying. So, like it was no big deal, Eric and I went back to playing catch with Dash and Kaed. It was a pretty strange feeling really. I mean, Eric and I legitimately saved their lives (they were screwed if we didn't get them) and our heartbeats hardly raised a beat. Crazy. Kaed asked us what we were doing and we calmly said, "Just saving lives."

Answer: the left.